The closest thing that we found when looking for documentation of human placentophagia was that certain mammals do eat the placenta. Oh, and Billy’s friend Gail likes Polenta. But that really doesn’t have much to do with the answer.

The internet has many references to eating the placenta and recipes abound. It is unclear whether this is actually done. Many ancient cultures revered the placenta. The Navajo felt that the placenta was sacred but poisonous. The Shilluk, a Sudanese people on the West Nile, apparently practiced a symbolic ingestion of the afterbirth. They buried the placenta at the roots of a fruit tree, and the following season ritualistically ate the fruit and drank tea made from the fruit. Human placenta has also been an ingredient in some traditional Chinese medicines.